


I'll Be Good

by aghamora



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family Feels, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 01:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13823361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: She comes home to a light on in the kitchen and the smell of dinner cooking.





	I'll Be Good

**Author's Note:**

> Because canon is annoying me currently, I wanted to write my ideal season finale ending for Flaurel.... really my ideal ending is minus baby bc babies are fucking annoying, but. They're semi-ok in fic. 
> 
> Also Pete Nowalk if you're reading this, which I know you are, shoutout for stealing my baby name. Leave kudos/hire me to make up for it.

She comes home to a light on in the kitchen and the smell of dinner cooking.

It slams into her all at once, the warm medley of tomatoes and herbs and spices filling the apartment, and through the darkness she can see the doorway to the kitchen illuminated, light pouring across the carpet. Laurel drops her bag by the door and follows the sound of a voice, one that she’d recognize anywhere; although now it’s softer, lilting. More of a coo than anything.

She rounds the corner, and that’s when she finds them there.

Frank is in an apron – that same striped apron she’d used to mock him for relentlessly – standing in front of a bubbling saucepot on the stove with the baby nestled in the crook of his arms. He’s cooking pasta too, from the looks of it, but for a moment he seems to have paused, instead giving little Christopher a tour of the spice rack, introducing him to each one animatedly as the baby stares up at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes. Laurel knows he has no damn clue what Frank is rambling on about and yet he looks fascinated nonetheless, smiling his gummy smile and smacking his lips.

For a while she watches in silence, not wanting to disturb them, intrude on their moment and break this spell. This moment belongs to them. There’s a quality to it that’s almost magical.

She thinks, for a moment, that she could get used to coming home to this.

“This one? This is called thyme. But, y’know, not like _time_ on a clock. With a y. And this one here’s oregano. Both green, so don’t get ‘em mixed up. I use this in my special sauce. Once we get you eatin’ real food you can try it. Made some for your ma once while you were still in the oven, dunno if you remember. Or – well, could sneak some into a bottle, maybe, get you an Italian appetite goin’ ASAP. I’ll teach you the recipe one day, but you can’t go tellin’ the other kids on the playground or anythin’, all right? It’s top secret. Delfino _family_ secret. And you’re part of that club, buddy.”

Frank puts a finger up to his lips in a shushing motion for emphasis. Chris gives a chirp that could almost be laughter, and Laurel melts against the doorway, a lump knotting in her throat; not from sadness for the first time in ages but from sudden, overwhelming joy.

“And, look – know what this is called? Paprika. Can you say that? Pap-ri-ka?” Frank enunciates each syllable clearly. When Christopher only stares at him, he chuckles. “Fine. But paprika? Oh boy, one hel – heck of a spice. Cool color. Comes in smoked, mild, hot. All different kinds. Can you say hot? H-o-t? Like your ma. Hot.”

She can’t hold back her snicker at that, and Frank’s head snaps in her direction when he hears it, breaking out into an easy smile. “Hey. Didn’t hear you come in.”

“I appreciate the ego boost,” she remarks, walking over to them. “But you shouldn’t lie to him.”

She takes the baby into her arms, movements still a bit clumsy, unfamiliar with handling him and even now terrified of hurting him. Sometimes she swears it comes easier to Frank than it does to her, but she doesn’t let the thought sour this moment, and she doesn’t dwell on it long. She’s given up dwelling on things like that ever since she got Christopher back, given up on wallowing in the past, the could-have-been’s, should-have-been’s, endless hypotheticals that don’t matter and never will. She won’t lie and say she has no regrets, because she does, she knows every damn person in the _world_ does, but they no longer seem to matter like they once did.

Coming home to this, to Frank and her son. To this family they’re building together. That’s what matters.

“Aw c’mon,” he chides. “That was the gospel truth. And I know for a fact he thinks you’re the bees knees.”

“ _I_ think you’re projecting,” she quips, a hint of her own insecurities shining through before she can help it. “But I’ll take it. How’d he sleep?”

“Had better nights. Probably just ‘cause he missed you. We were in the same boat there.”

It makes her chest clench with something in the realm of guilt; to think that she’s hardly had her son back for more than a month and she’s already fucking up, leaving him. Frank had been insistent, though, when Annalise’s case had gone to the Supreme Court, telling her he couldn’t let her pass up on the chance of a lifetime – and so, reluctantly, she’d gone. Still, she can’t shake that gnawing feeling, even as she adjusts Christopher in her arms, inhaling the scent of his skin greedily, all fresh and new and unblemished, and _good_.

“I’m sorry I left,” she murmurs, half to the baby, half to Frank. She presses her lips to his forehead, humming. “I shouldn’t have.”

“It’s all good,” Frank soothes, grinning as he slings a rag over his shoulder. “Me ‘n Chris had one hell of a party. Watched the game. He went hard, chugged his bottle ‘til he passed out. And I like bein’ the homemaker while you’re out there chasing your dreams.”

Her lips pull into a grin before she can help it. “That so?”

“Yeah, keep me barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen any day.”

She snorts, taking a seat at her little kitchen table while Frank returns to the stove. It feels odd to be back in her old place, after months of living in a tiny apartment like something straight out of Les Miserables, but both she and Frank had acknowledged the necessity of more space and known that was no place to raise a child.

They’re making it work, the two of them and Christopher. It’s working better than she could’ve imagined. She feels like she’s living in some sort of dream in this moment, a picturesque, surreal tableau, sitting at the table watching Frank cook and blabber on about his and Christopher’s misadventures in her absence. Eventually she stops listening altogether, her consciousness drifting as she watches Frank, apron tied at his back, rag slung over his shoulder, cheeks flushed from the heat of the stove and sweat beading on his brow, because she can’t remember the last time things felt so right, all the scattered puzzle pieces of her world settled into place, the chaos behind her eyes gone silent.

She loves him. The thought doesn’t hit her with any force, throw her for a loop. Instead it drifts to the surface from somewhere deep inside her, where she knows it’s been all along. And it isn’t a realization, because she realized that a long time ago – but now, now, she’s remembering.

In the quiet after the storm, finally, she can allow herself to remember.

“…And, y’know,” Frank’s voice comes crashing in on her thoughts, that sort of mindless babble he’s taken to doing ever since Christopher came, “I may be just a stand-in for you, but I think I’m a shoe-in for babysitter of the year. Chris’ll tell ya, right buddy? Could make a career out of it. Frankie D’s Daycare Center. I might as well-”

“I don’t want you to be his babysitter.”

She blurts the words out before she can think them through. _Thinking_ doesn’t even really come into play at all; before she knows it she’s just _said_ them, cast them out into the space between them, spoken them into being. She feels out of sorts, dazed, and when Frank glances back at her, caught off guard and wide-eyed like he’s made some horrible misstep, she knows he’s confused.

“I mean, I don’t-” She cuts herself off, steeling herself to say the words, as if they’ll bring the sky crashing down on them. “I don’t want you to just be his babysitter. I want… I want you to be there.”

_Be his father._ She can’t quite bring herself to say the words yet, terrified of what saying them aloud will mean. It half-feels like betrayal, erasing Wes from her son’s life, but she knows and Frank knows that her son deserves a father, and they both know he might as well be his father now, anyway. Because he isn’t his babysitter, isn’t _Uncle Frank_ or his nanny or any other banal title meant to dress up the truth of what he is to her son. She doesn’t see a point in that.

Frank doesn’t say anything. He’s only looking at her, blinking now and then like he can’t quite believe any of this is real, the ghost of a smile playing at his lips.

“It’s – we can’t make it official. For step-parent adoption you have to be married, and that’s not… where we are, but I want-” She cuts herself off again, frustrated by her inability to say what she wants to say, that intrinsic trepidation, the instinct to hold back. She’s done enough holding back to last a lifetime, enough biting her tongue and swallowing her feelings. She’s so sick of it she could scream. “I want to do this. Together.”

“You do?”

He looks like he’s about ready to cry, like he’d believed he’d never live to see this moment, and that touches her almost as much as it hurts like hell – to know the extent of the damage she’s done to him, the eternal pushing away and pushing away until he’d assumed she’d never do anything _but_.

She nods. “Yeah.”

He walks over to her as if in a trance, the pots bubbling on the stove all but forgotten, and slowly, hesitantly, like she’s a doe in the woods that might bolt, crouches down before her. She can tell he has so much he wants to say but can’t articulate it, either – but she knows too that there are some words that don’t need to be said, some things that are more profound when left unspoken. He swallows, starting to say something before words fail him once again, and his brows pull together, blue eyes depthless, wide like a child’s.

“That’s… that’s all I-” he cuts himself off. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Let’s… let’s do it.” He perks up suddenly, nodding down at Chris. “Think we gotta get one other person’s permission first, huh?” Laurel shifts forward as best she can, angling the baby towards him, and Frank laughs; a wet, thick sound that holds so much in it, adoration and shock and happiness and relief – and _finally_. A gut-punch sense of _finally_. “What d’you say kid? You down with me hangin’ around for good?” He laughs again, and in that moment it’s as if Christopher is all he can see, the sole object in existence in his world. “You cool with us bein’ a family or what?”

The baby doesn’t make a sound, but his lips do curl up to form that same slobbery grin from before, and soon Laurel’s laughter joins his. “That’s a yes, I think.”

“Good, y’know. Gotta make sure he’s cool with it.” He’s close, closer than she’s allowed him in what feels like ages. So close every inch of her feels alive, the air jumping with static electricity. Potential energy, urging her closer to him. “Him bein’ the third party in this arrangement and all.”

“You think a smile and some drool means this is a binding legal contract?”

Frank shrugs. “Closest thing we’re gonna get, right?”

He’s close. So close she could lean in, press her lips against his, break down those carefully-constructed barriers between them, and the ease with which the thought comes startles her – and what startles her more is the fact that she doesn’t feel startled by it at all. Still, she clears her throat, all at once, moving back and rising to her feet.

“I’ll, uh, I’ll put him down. Dinner almost done?”

The spell broken, Frank snaps out of it, standing a bit clumsily, like an astronaut suddenly unfamiliar with the feeling of gravity, unsure how to move under its weight.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’ll be on in a bit, lemme know when you’re ready.”

She returns from the other room after a moment, stowing Christopher away in his crib, and finds Frank at the stove again, his back turned to her as he labors away. He hears her this time, though, and turns, that same smile on his face from before; that look in her eyes no one has ever given her, before. No expectations or judgement. Just genuine happiness to see her; genuine and simple and _sweet_ , no ulterior motives or bad intentions behind it.

“So, you’re teaching him how to cook already?” Laurel finally asks, a bit awkwardly. She hangs back against the counter, as casual as she can manage in a way she can already tell isn’t coming across remotely casual at all.

“Never too soon to start. And, if I’m around here more, I wanna be able to teach him somethin’. Cooking’s about all I got.”

“Yeah. B&E’s should probably wait until he’s a teenager, at least.”

It’s a joke, and she doesn’t mean anything by it, but there’s something about it that makes Frank wilt, slightly. A reminder of his past life, maybe. Who he was. All the things he did, the lingering traces of them that are still inexorably sewn into his skin, threaded through his veins. He’s trying so hard to be good, she can see it.

For her. For her son. For this – this family they’re building. This home they’re making together. They can never truly shed the skins of who they were, she knows that. But they can, at least, try to be good.

“I like that, though,” she hastens to add. “You teaching him things.”

“I’m only good at talkin’ his ear off,” Frank quips and tosses a dash of salt into the saucepot. “Half the time he probably wishes I’d just shut my trap.”

“You’re good at it,” she presses, unwilling to back down, her body burning with a sudden potent desire to let him know that he’s wanted – by her, by her son. That he isn’t an intrusion and never has been. “You’re good with him.”

Frank catches her eyes, another tentative grin beginning to emerge – and she thinks he’s about to say something when she leans back, her hand connecting with a piece of paper lying on the counter behind her. She frowns and spins around, finding a folded letter there next to an envelope embossed with the ornate Middleton logo.

Laurel holds it up. “What’s this?”

“Oh. That.” He looks bashful all of a sudden, tucking his hands into his pockets, and his nonchalance is so overtly _not_ nonchalant she could laugh. “It, uh, came today.”

Slowly, Laurel unfolds the paper, skimming the first line. And it turns out that first line is all she needs.

_Dear Mr. Delfino,_

_On behalf of the faculty and administration, it is my pleasure to inform you that you have been accepted for admission to Middleton Law School for the fall 2016 term-_

“Oh my God,” she breathes, before she can read another word, eyes darting up to look at him. “You… you got into Middleton – I didn’t… I didn’t even know you applied-”

Frank tries to shrug it off. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s good news.”

“Not _just_ good news. You got in. To _Middleton_.” She shakes her head in disbelief. “That’s amazing, I didn’t – you didn’t mention you were applying.”

He shrugs again. “You had other stuff to worry about. Didn’t wanna bug you about it.”

He didn’t tell her. Maybe he genuinely hadn’t thought she would care, and the thought hurts her, another reminder of how badly she’s broken him, the scar tissue loving her has left him riddled with.

“You wouldn’t have been bugging me,” she says, firmly, and takes a step closer to him. “That’s – this is… oh my God.”

Frank wipes his hands on the rag, still bashful. “Yeah, surprised they let me in. Was gonna drop Annalise’s name in my personal statement, but I thought maybe that wouldn’t be the best move, after how much she pissed the administration off.”

“What’d you write about, then?”

“Wrote some about work, just left out her name. Experiences and stuff. Time I spent on the inside, before. But mostly… I wrote about this girl I met when she was a 1L. And she was idealistic, went into law to help people, and I thought she was naïve, at first, for thinkin’ she could make a difference and all that.” He pauses. When she realizes what he means, her heart drops to her stomach. “Talked about how I fell in love with her. How smart she is. And how she’s got a kid now, and he’s not mine but the first time I saw ‘em together… I realized there’s good in the world, still. And how I’ve done bad things, that was what landed me in jail in the first place, but… she makes me wanna do good.” Another pause, heavy with meaning. He’s looking at her with a softness she can’t describe. “That’s what I wanna do now. Somethin’ good.”

She can’t move, suddenly. Can’t speak. Can hardly breathe. Because this – this story she knows.

The story of them.

“You wrote about me?” she whispers.

“Yeah,” is all he says, softly, and it’s all he needs to say.

For a moment they only stand there in the stillness, a gully between them so wide Laurel swears it spans miles, eons, light years. The people in that story seem like they existed in another life. Fictional roles they’d once played. Mere characters.

There’s a gully between them, miles wide. And then before Laurel knows it she’s crossing it with sudden determination in her stride, closing that gap like it was never even there, stalking forward and rising up onto her tiptoes and kissing him until there’s no space between their bodies at all. It’s been so long since she’s done something like this that she can feel Frank stiffen, initially, in something that’s probably disbelief, as if he’s preparing himself to wake from a dream, have this torn from his hands by cruel reality.

And God, suddenly she just needs him to know _everything_ ; all the things she’s held back all these months, every single word and touch and glance and thought, everything she couldn’t tell him, could never give him. She pours them all into that kiss instead, surging against Frank before receding, drawing back but staying close, lips still hovering over his, the scent of their kiss and the sound of their breathing heavy in the air.

“Thank you,” she breathes, finally, and leans her forehead against his chin, at last allowing herself to lean on him after what feels like decades of standing on her own.

He grins, loopy and dazed. “For what?”

“I don’t know.” She shakes her head, throat going cotton-dry all at once. “Everything. For staying, even after Chris, my parents, all this. Anyone else in their right mind would’ve… run in the other direction, but you-” She raises her eyes to meet his. “You stayed. I never thanked you for that.”

“Don’t gotta thank me. I don’t mind you bein’ a package deal,” he teases. “Two for the price of one. And I love him.” He pauses, eyes warm with affection, brimming with it. “Much as I love you.”

Her heart feels like a bass drum inside her chest, deafening and drowning out all else. The words are behind her teeth, loaded on the tip of her tongue – and then without warning they’re rushing up and out of her like a dam breaking, those words she’s held back a hundred thousand times for a hundred thousand different reasons; as an act of cruelty, first, and then as a defense mechanism, and then, time and time again after that, out of fear.

There are some words that don’t need to be said. But these are ones that do.

“I love you too.” Laurel lowers her eyes, unable to look at him suddenly. “You’ve said it so much and I’ve never… I’ve never said it back. I should’ve said it sooner, I just-”

“Hey,” he interrupts, gently, and reaches up to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering for just a second longer than they need to on the shell. “You’re sayin’ it now, that’s all that matters. And I said I’d wait.” He smiles, a small, sweet smile, just barely an upward quirking of his lips. “I said I’d wait.”

He said he’d wait. She remembers that night like it was yesterday, how he’d barged into her apartment and broken down her walls and let those words pour of him. He’d just _told_ her, told her everything he felt for her like it was nothing at all, as natural as breathing, and all she had been able to do was stare like a fool, standing still with her mouth glued shut and her heart screaming silently and a million words bottled up inside her.

He loved her then, like he loves her now. He’d promised to wait, and she knows he would’ve waited for months, years, decades, as long as it took, even if he had to spend his whole _life_ waiting, but now-

“I know,” she breathes, and kisses him again. “I don’t want you to have to wait, anymore.”


End file.
